Toptal Blog

An operating system written in Node.js? Yes, it exists, and it’s called NodeOS. Think for a second about the progress Node.js has made in the short time it’s been around. Now, imagine the same thing happening with an operating system.

In this article, Toptal engineer Danny Morabito introduces us to NodeOS, guiding us with a step-by-step tutorial on how to create our first NodeOS application using nothing more than Node.js.

Smooth animations and flawless transitions are key to perceived performance in modern mobile applications. Without the right tools, tuning iOS animation for efficiency can be a challenge in itself.

In this article, Toptal engineer Stefan Progovac demonstrates the role of Instruments, a sophisticated set of performance profiling tools for iOS, discussing how they can help you understand animation performance bottlenecks and some strategies for working around them.

Processing makes prototyping visual apps a breeze. With its easy to use programming constructs and some mathematics, building a simple game is a lot easier than one may think.

In this article, Toptal engineer Oguz Gelal provides a step-by-step tutorial to building a game using Processing and porting it to the web.

REST APIs have become a common way to establish an interface between web back-ends and front-ends, and between different web services. The simplicity of this kind of interface, and the ubiquitous support of the HTTP and HTTPS protocols across different networks and frameworks, makes it an easy choice when considering interoperability issues.

Bottle is a minimalist Python web framework. It is lightweight, fast, and easy to use, and is well-suited to building RESTful services. In this article, I’ll provide a walkthrough of how to build a RESTful API service using Bottle.

Talking about proximity marketing will get you varying reactions, from concerns about privacy issues to the idea that your phone is going to spam you with annoying ads non-stop, but if you boil down the idea, there are some really compelling concepts here.

When you clear away all the buzzwords, what exactly is this shift we’re seeing? It’s the world customizing itself to you. The world is reacting to your presence, specific to you as an individual. Retailers and start-ups have taken notice, and the concepts of mobile location analytics and proximity marketing are emerging out of that.

The long-term effect of the Cold War on science and technology is more profound than Nena’s 99 Luftbalons, or any Oliver Stone Vietnam flick.

If you are reading this, you’re already using Cold War technology; The Internet. That’s not all. A lot of tech and infrastructure we take for granted was developed, or at least conceived, during these tumultuous decades.

Spotlight search in Apple iOS 9, compared to earlier versions, has been made much more prominent and personal. With suggestions from Siri and integration opportunities for third-party apps, iPhone’s search functionality is no longer limited to the scope of Apple’s own apps. In this article, Toptal engineer Richard Forsythe explores some iOS SDK functionalities that allow apps to make content available to the user via Spotlight search.

Maintainable code is something we all desire and there are no shortage of coding principles that promise it. It is not always apparent how tremendously useful these principles are during the early stages of development. Nonetheless, the effort put in to ensure these qualities certainly pay off as the project grows and development continues. In this article, Toptal engineer Adel Fayzrakhmanov discusses how the Single Responsibility Principle is one of the most important aspect in writing good maintainable code.

Whether you’re creating a virtual storefront, deploying an app, or simply doing some third-party testing and development, chances are you need some server muscle. The good news is that there is a lot to choose from. The hosting industry may not be loud or exciting, but it never sleeps; it’s a dog eat dog world, with cutthroat pricing, a lot of innovation behind the scenes, and cyclical hardware updates.

In this article, we take a look at hosting options for freelance software engineers: PaaS, Cloud, VPS, dedicated, and more.